Bush's budget proposal for health care including Medicare

Here are some key facts about President George W. Bush's budget proposal for health care including Medicare, the national health insurance program for the elderly created in 1965.

-- Bush seeks nearly $36 billion in savings from Medicare, which covers about 42 million people, including all Americans age 65 and older and about 6 million disabled people. Spending in 2006 -- as the new drug benefit is going into effect -- is expected to be $397 billion and would rise to $458 billion in 2007. If Bush's plans are enacted, Medicare spending would rise an average 7.5 percent a year over the next decade. With no changes, the growth would be 7.8 percent.

-- Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance) covers hospitals, nursing homes and some home health care and is funded mainly through a payroll tax paid by employees and employers (1.45 percent each). Bush proposed trimming the payment increases to hospitals and freezing fees for the other providers.

-- Medicare Part B covers doctors, outpatient hospital care, lab tests and most home health care. It is financed by a combination of beneficiary-paid premiums (25 percent of the total) and general federal revenues (75 percent). Wealthier Americans will start paying higher premiums in 2007, and Bush's budget will allow those payments to rise more sharply.

-- The budget calls for $2.8 billion for medicine and vaccine stockpiles, disease surveillance and other measures to help prepare for a possible influenza pandemic, and $4 billion for global AIDS relief

-- Bush wants $28.4 billion for the National Institutes of Health, which conducts basic science research, including $1.9 billion for biodefense research and development.

-- Bush's proposals to expand tax preferred Health Savings Accounts would cost up to $60 billion. The administration says HSAs will help people become smarter health-care consumers and restrain costs but critics say they give tax breaks to more affluent people and do little for the uninsured.